France’s prime minister is ousted as the nation drifts into turmoil – Chicago Tribune
Paris – Another Prime Minister left. Another crisis takes place. In France, what once shocked is now a routine.
Prime Minister François Bayrou submitted his resignation on Tuesday after losing an overwhelming vote of confidence in Parliament. The third reversal of a head of government in 14 months leaves President Emmanuel Macron rushing for a successor and a nation taken in a collapse cycle.
Bayrou, 74, only lasted nine months in power. Even it was three times longer than its predecessor.
He played on a demanding budget more than 40 billion euros in savings. The plan froze well-being, cut jobs at civil service and even suppressed two holidays that many French people see as part of their national pace.
Bayrou warned that without action, the national debt, which now represents 114% of GDP, would bring “domination by creditors” as surely as by foreign powers.
Instead, he united his enemies. The extreme right of Marine Le Pen and a left alliance elected him, from 364 to 194. The polls showed that most of the French wanted him to disappear. As the legislators voted, Bayrou had already invited allies to a farewell drink.
Macron appears in a box
The president has promised to appoint a new Prime Minister “in the coming days”. It will be his fourth in less than two years.
There are several possible replacements: the Minister of Defense Sébastien Lecornu, the Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin, the former Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and the Minister of Finance Eric Lombard.
But the problem is not the staff, it is arithmetic.
From the Macron Snap elections in 2024, the Parliament has been divided into three rival blocks: on the far left, centrists and the far right. None command a majority. France has no tradition of strengthening the coalition and each budget becomes a battle.
Macron has excluded another election for the moment. Le Pen insists on the fact that he must call one. Opinion polls suggest that his national rally would cement his lead if he did it. With only 18 months to play in its presidency and its 15%approval rating, the risk of Macron is existential.
Anger rises in the streets
On Monday evening, around 11,000 demonstrators celebrated the ouster of Bayrou outside the town hall in farewell drinks “bye bye Bayrou”.
Some came for the celebration. Many stayed to organize.
Wednesday was declared a day of action under the slogan “block everything”. The demonstrators plan to close the fuel deposits, the highways and the city centers. The government deploys 80,000 police officers.
France has already experienced mass uprisings: pensions in 2023, yellow acts in 2018. But this time, anger is deeper. It is not just a reform. It is austerity, inequality and the feeling that governments continue to collapse while nothing changes.
The budget has a trap
The figures are austere. The French deficit represents almost 6% of GDP, or around 198 billion euros. EU rules require that it be reduced below 3%.
The healing of Bayrou was cuts that fell on workers and retirees. Voters considered it unfair. After years of tax alternatives for companies and rich, patience broke. Surveys show that overwhelming majority of French people want higher taxes on ultra-rich.
Earlier this year, the Lower House adopted a rich tax proposal – a 2% levy on fortunes greater than 100 million euros. He would have reached less than 2,000 households but collected 25 billion euros per year. However, Macron’s pro-business allies, historically distrusting the investment, killed him in the Senate.
Bayrou supported with cuts that have struck the work classes the most and the middle classes.
For many, the contrast was obvious: austerity for millions, the protection of billionaires.
The president is under pressure
Macron’s room to maneuver is narrowed. A Centrist Prime Minister can only survive months. A socialist could emphasize the wealth taxes that Macron refuses. New elections could hand over the even larger pen.
Le Pen, found guilty of embezzlement and banned automatically for five years, calls on his sentence from January. In the meantime, she promotes her protégé Jordan Bardella as a ready Prime Minister. The perspective is a dreaded Macron.
Abroad, Macron seeks to project French influence in Ukraine and Gaza. At home, he looks cornered. Even resignation whispers can be heard, although his departure is unlikely.
History is repeated
Four Prime Ministers in 16 months. A debt crisis crushing the economy. A nation paralyzed by a political impasse. It looks like France today. In fact, it was France after the Second World War.
From this paralysis, Charles de Gaulle built the fifth republic, a system intended to ban such chaos forever. Seven decades later, the Republic he forged to keep the collapse facing the crisis that she was designed to prevent.
Politics is now fractured in three camps. Without tradition of compromise, unlike Germany or Italy, the result is a dead end.
“The question posed now is that of the survival of our political system,” said Alain Duhamel, political analyst, the newspaper Le Monde. “In 1958 there was an alternative in the form of De Gaulle. Like him or hate him, he undoubtedly had a project. ”
Why it matters
France is the second economy in the euro zone, its only nuclear power and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Prolonged instability in the country has repercussions far beyond its borders.
The political difficulty of France weakens the hand of Europe against Russia. It vibrates investors and undermines the credibility of the EU tax rules.
At home, he distances confidence in the state itself. France’s social protection system – pensions, health care, education – is not only a policy. It is identity. Each attempt to cut the structure resembles an assault on the solidarity model that defines modern France.
The road to come is not routine
Macron’s next appointment will test if the fifth republic can always ensure stability. Whoever takes the work will face the same trap that has consumed Bayrou: spend a budget in a parliament that cannot agree.
Gabriel Attal, a former Prime Minister of the Macron camp, calls for the cycle of collapse “an absolutely painful spectacle” and proposes to install a political mediator to help forge a strong coalition. Its warning is frank: France cannot continue to overthrow governments every few months.
De Gaulle built the Republic to put an end to chaos of the 1950s. Now, while the demonstrators are preparing to block the nation, many even fear that the safeguard fails.
France awaits a name, a budget, a way to follow. For the proof that order can still go from drift and collapse is not the new routine.
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